Death of a God

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• S T Haymon
  
• Author's note
  
• PART ONE
  
• Chapter One
  
• Chapter Two
  
• Chapter Three
  
• Chapter Four
  
• Chapter Five
  
• Chapter Six
  
• Chapter Seven
  
• Chapter Eight
  
• Chapter Nine
  
• Chapter Ten
  
• Chapter Eleven
  
• Chapter Twelve
  
• Chapter Thirteen
  
• Chapter Fourteen
  
• Chapter Fifteen
  
• Chapter Sixteen
  
• Chapter Seventeen
  
• Chapter Eighteen
  
• Chapter Nineteen
  
• Chapter Twenty
  
• Chapter Twenty One
  
• Chapter Twenty Two
  
• Chapter Twenty Three
  
• Chapter Twenty Four
  
• Chapter Twenty Five
  
• Chapter Twenty Six
  
• Chapter Twenty Seven
  
• PART TWO
  
• Chapter Twenty Eight
  
• Chapter Twenty Nine
  
• Chapter Thirty
  
• Chapter Thirty One
  
• Chapter Thirty Two
  
• Chapter Thirty Three
  
• Chapter Thirty Four
  
• PART THREE
  
• Chapter Thirty Five
  
• Chapter Thirty Six
  
• Chapter Thirty Seven
  
• Chapter Thirty Eight
  

Sylvia Theresa Haymon was born in Norwich, and is best known for her eight crime fiction novels featuring the character Inspector Ben Jurnet. Haymon also wrote two non-fiction books for children, as well as two memoirs of her childhood in East Anglia.

The Ben Jurnet series enjoyed success in both the UK and the US during Haymon's lifetime:
Ritual Murder
(1982) won the prestigious CWA Silver Dagger Award from the Crime Writers' Association.
Stately Homicide
(1984), a skilful variation on the country house mystery, was praised by the New York Times as a ‘brilliantly crafted novel of detection … stylish serious fiction', and favourably compared to the work of Dorothy L. Sayers.

Anyone who knows Norfolk will recognize that Norwich is the starting point for my city of Angleby. But only the starting point. The city and its inhabitants are the figments of my imagination; and no reference is made to any living person.

S. T.H.

The storm broke without warning. One moment the day was bright, brittle with the sunshine of early spring; the next, rain lanced down from clouds split by lightning into convulsions of angry air, thunder blundering about the sky like a drunken giant trying to find his way home in the dark. Fingers of wind tweaked tiles from roof tops, whirled desiccated bits of this and that, the detritus of winter, upward for a brief resurrection before the rain beat them back to earth again, doubly dead.

The rain hit the ground at a sharp angle and turned the slope into a series of rivulets, now separating, now coalescing, as they found their way downhill. Amidst all the hullaballoo only the three crosses planted a little below the summit held their stillness and their silence, the three figures that hung upon them motionless and unaware. Water dripped from their soaked hair, their eyebrows, noses, chins; glistened on their contorted bodies and on their faces, two of them with eyeballs uprolled to heaven in agonized supplication or incredulous surprise (it was difficult to decide which), the third, the central one, chin sunk on bony chest, inscrutable, a shell from which the spirit had departed so thoroughly as to leave behind scarcely even the semblance of one-time life. A pigeon, thrown out of gear by the sudden change in the weather, landed clumsily on the horizontal of the central cross, a little above a pierced hand; found no comfort there and took off again, beating a laborious way towards better shelter. In the lightning flashes, hailstones which had impaled themselves on the crown of thorns which encircled the down-drooping head shone like pearls.

Detective-Inspector Benjamin Jurnet, sheltering in the doorway of Mucho Macho, the menswear shop on the eastern side of Angleby Market Place, peered out at the downpour and observed sourly, ‘God save us from trendy bishops! Wouldn't surprise me if His Grace and the blooming Parks and Recreation Committee hadn't laid this on as well, the two of them between them. Wasn't there a storm when it really happened?' Quickly correcting himself, glad that neither Miriam nor Rabbi Schnellman was within earshot, ‘When it was supposed to have happened?'

‘In that case, boyo, compose yourself for a long wait.' In his ripe, Welsh Chapel voice, Detective-Sergeant Jack Ellers, Jurnet's companion and colleague, launched himself into an approximate quotation: ‘‘‘Now from the sixth hour there was darkness all over the land until the ninth hour. The temple veil was rent in twain from the top to the bottom, the earth did quake and the rocks rent'' – and that's to say nothing of graves opening and giving up their dead.' Finishing sunnily: ‘Not to worry, though. Not even God in all His glory's going to open Angleby graves without a union card.'

The rain had begun to ease, the giant lurching off to the north as if he had suddenly remembered it was the Norfolk coast he had been making for all along. Stall-holders in the Market Place emerged from their lairs and began taking off the covers they had hastily spread over their piles of fruit and veg, their sheets and pillow cases, video cassettes and girlie mags. They poked with broom handles at the striped awnings bellying with water. By the time the two detectives had crossed the street and ascended the main alleyway between the stalls, dodging the not always fortuitous cascades dislodged by the prodding brooms, a tentative sunbeam was brightening the gilded numbers on the City Hall clock.

Jurnet's opinion of authorities ecclesiastical and municipal alike was not improved by a closer view of the crosses on the hill. They had been inserted into one of the flower beds in the narrow strip of public garden which terminated the business part of the Market Place at its upper, western, end. Daffodils in pinched-looking bud clustered about their bases. The pigeon – was it the same one? – had returned to its former resting place on the central cross. It croo-crooed a little in a self-satisfied way, the pink and green on the back of its neck handsome in the strengthening light; probed about with its beak under one wing, and defecated on the arm of the crucified Christ.

‘Bugger off!' Jurnet shouted, clapping his hands. The bird, inured to the much greater clatter of the market, regarded him beadily and did it again.

Jack Ellers, referring, not too delicately, to the fact that his superior officer, albeit with no notable result to date, was studying to convert to Judaism, remarked cheekily, ‘Shouldn't have thought, Ben, it was your pigeon any longer? Besides, in the Holy Land, if you think about it, it'd have been a lot worse than pigeons. Ravens or vultures, more likely.'

‘Don't let on to the Bishop, for Christ's sake, or he'll be phoning the Zoo aviary before you know it!' Impatient with his own ill humour: ‘And it's nothing to do with religion, either. It's simply – well, it's a matter of taste,' he finished lamely.

‘Darling, you are growing o-old, Silver threads among the gold –'
The little Welshman trilled a few bars and regarded his companion's dark good looks with a blend of pity and amusement. ‘Comes to even the sexiest of us sooner or later.'

‘That'll be enough of that, Sergeant!' Jurnet returned his attention to the silent figures looming above him. Forcing his feelings into marketable, if makeshift, order: ‘All I meant is – if it was just somebody's cock-eyed way of celebrating Easter I wouldn't say a word. As you say, it's none of my business any more. But you can bet your bottom dollar, however else they may or may not have looked on Calvary in whatever it was AD, none of 'em looked the spitting image of a bloody pop group that happens – just happens – to be playing the town this week!'

‘Not just any old pop group, laddie. One from Angleby! Return of the native son loaded down with gold and platinum discs to the simple Council log-cabin where it all began, with skiffle learnt at his Mammy's knee. That's the whole point, boyo, don't you see?' Hard to tell if Ellers were serious or still fooling. ‘It's called making religion relevant to the young. Not their fault the Apostles, poor sods, hadn't so much as a Jew's harp between the lot of ' em, even if Jesus did say to Peter, ‘‘Thou art my rock and roll,'' or words to that effect. Personally, I think the Bishop's on to something.'

‘Hm! Next thing you know, he'll be chucking the organ out of the cathedral and plugging in a synthesizer.'

‘Do wonders for the collection, I'll tell you that! Did you hear that his holiness is attending tonight in person? With purple hair, I shouldn't wonder, now that bishops don't go in for those ducky purple pinnies any more. His worship won't be paying for his ticket himself, that's for sure. What they're changing hands for, you could pick up the crown jewels for less.'

‘Just as well I hadn't planned to go. Miriam's the one buys their albums day they come out. Keeps them over at her place, thank goodness, so I don't have to suffer.' Jurnet continued his gaze upward, deliberately concentrating his attention on the two outer figures of the trio. Since setting in motion the long-drawn-out process of conversion he found any encounter with Jesus, in whatever shape or form, an embarrassment, on a par with running into your old headmaster when you were out on the town with a bird on your arm in fishnet tights and a black leather mini.

One of the outer figures – naked except for a plaid jockstrap – was of a black man, with a noble physique and strongly etched features which must have been even more striking when not distorted by the pangs of crucifixion. Water still dripped rhythmically from the coloured beads which ended each of his clustering braids. The second subsidiary figure was as tall, but of slighter build; white, a neat, efficient body topped by a face of equivocal charm. With him, even the terminal agony seemed under control, informed by an intelligence already detached from the suffering flesh. The full, sensual mouth was open in a silent scream which could just as easily have been a grin at the absurdity of his own predicament. Only a clown, it seemed to be proclaiming, with no respect for the fitness of things, could have allowed himself to be crucified in baby-blue boxer shorts with a pink stripe down the sides.